Band angry, disappointed with ICC decision

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The Indian Claims Commission (ICC) is now partially responsible for the heartbreak of the Elders of Carry The Kettle First Nation.

Since 1997, the First Nation has been working closely with the ICC, researching the bands claim that the Cypress Hills area was the selected land that the First Nation and the Crown agreed upon in the signing of Treaty 4 in 1877.

"Within the community, our Elders, they are the ones who are heartbroken," said Carry The Kettle First Nation Chief Kurt Adams. "That is the way they feel because as far as we're concerned we are trying to get justice done here. We're reaching out for justice but nothing was done."

When the Assiniboine people agreed to sign the treaty, they were given the chance to select the land on which to reside. They selected their traditional land of the Cypress Hills. The Crown was in agreement with the selection and a "meeting of the minds" between the two parties was, in the Assinboine people's viewpoint, established.

"The land was surveyed as the agreed selection. A farm instructor was sent to teach the Assiniboine people agriculture, and they were given treaty payment as residing in that selected area," said Elsie Koochicum, treaty land settlement/specific claims co-ordinator of the First Nation.

In 1880, the government forcibly relocated the Assiniboine by cutting their food rations. They feared the people would join the Louis Riel rebellion that was going on nearby at the time.

"Big Bear and Sitting Bull were in the area as well. There were around 6,000 Indian people," said Koochicum. "So the government figured that there would be a major rebellion starting up and I believe they had only 55 mounted police in the area."

Although the Assiniboine made efforts between 1881 and 1882 to return to their traditional homeland where they faced starvation, they eventually had no choice but to relocate to the area in which the First Nation is located today.

"The big question mark is that this reserve that we are situated on was not what we requested," said Koochicum. "This reserve, Carry The Kettle, that we are on today was surveyed by the federal government and they physically put us here. This reserve never had a meeting of the minds, the only meeting of the minds that Carry The Kettle ancestors had was in the Cypress Hills."

The ICC concluded their inquiry by stating that the band does not have a reserve in the Cypress Hills and that under Canadian law a reserve is not a reserve unless both the First Nation and the government recognize it as such.

"That is the thing we can't understand because as far as the stories passed down by our Elders, there was a meeting of the minds right throughout the whole process," said Adams. "When we signed adhesion to Treaty 4 it said in there that as a band you could pick what you wanted as a reserve and we had selected the Cypress Hills area so there was a meeting of the minds there."

The ICC visited the community throughout their inquiry but at the end of the investigation did not respect the Elders who invested so much into the process, said Koochikum.

"We asked them to hold off on their report and not to send it, but to come and explain their decision to the community in person," said Koochikum. "It becomes frustrating because our Elders partook in the inquiry for the last three years and for them at the end just to walk away and not even see them, I don't think that is very respectful."

The band has approached the grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Matthew Coon Come, in the hopes that he will take their case to the international forum of the United Nations.

"One of the things when we put out our response (to the ICC) is we said that we won't quit by direction of our Elders," said Adams. "We won't stop here. We will continue to lobby the federal and provincial governments in regards to the claims commission."

The ICC was unavailable for comment in regard to its report.